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19
POLICY • Vol. 30 No. 3 • Spring 2014
Jeremy Sammut
their behavior and other problems so severe, that
they can’t live with their parents, nor can they
live with a normal foster family. Te only option
is 'institutionalisation' by placement in a group
home stafed by professional carers. Residential care
also includes 'secure facilities' which are basically
asylums-cum-prisons for the most disturbed and
violent children.
A Failed System
Tis account of the faws in the current system
detailed the consequences for vulnerable children,
and also identi ed the problems with the standard
account and orthodox policy advice. Compiling
this account and critique has enabled the CIS's
research output to draw, with some authority, a
broader conclusion about the overall performance
of the system. is conclusion is that that a child
protection system that harms children is, by
defnition, a failed system.
Rather than not doing enough to support families
and too quickly removing children, the reality is
that too much, too prolonged family preservation
is done by child protection authorities, who do too
little, too late to remove children. Tese children
are then exposed to further harmful instability
while they linger in and out of care because of
overextended eforts to achieve family reunifcation.
Of the more than 40,000 children currently in
care in Australia, more than two-thirds have been
in care continuously for longer than two years.
Yet there were only 81 adoptions from care in
2012–13, 78 in New South Wales and just three in
the rest of the country.
Given the parlous state of child protection in
this country, the adoption reforms introduced by
the NSW government are an overdue efort to
address the real systemic faws in the system. New
permanency planning laws legislated in 2013 have
placed time limits on the period in which realistic
decisions must be made about nding permanent
and stable homes for children in care. Legal action
will be commenced to free children for adoption
if they are deemed unlikely to be able to go home
safely within six months of entering care for children
under two years of age and within 12 months of
entering care for children aged two years and older.
Similar to the NSW reforms, and inspired by
the same analysis of the problems and solutions,
are the Victorian government’s recently legislated
permanent care laws, which again centre around
enforcing timely and realistic decision-making to
achieve stability for children.
Tese are positive signs that the policy is
shifting. Te NSW and Victorian initiatives have
demonstrated the constructive role that think tanks
can play in policy debates. e purpose of rigorous
and detailed research is to accurately describe
the policy problem so the solutions proposed are
evidence-based and credible. Te ultimate objective
is to thereby attain infuence by putting the right
ideas into the minds and mouths of the politicians
with the ability to determine policy outcomes.
Accepted Versions
But despite the progress in NSW and Victoria,
challenges remain. Te Queensland government,
for example, has decided to go down the path of
‘more funding’ for early intervention services.
South Australia is currently holding an inquiry,
which is likely to also recommend more family
support, which is what all ofcial inquiries tend
to advise based on recent experience with similar
inquiries in NSW, Northern Territory, Queensland,
and Victoria.
Why is it that ofcial inquiries restate the
accepted wisdom? It is because they are high profle
political exercises, and governments are unlikely to
welcome, let alone implement, recommendations
that will provoke a frestorm of protest by academics
and stakeholders with ready access to the media.
Furthermore, the accepted wisdom is
promulgated and fed into ofcial inquiries by
academic specialists, who almost universally endorse
family preservation, which they teach at universities
to the social workers who staf child protection
authorities. is closed circle of mutually reinforcing
knowledge accounts for why both most academics
and departments like DOCS are ideologically
The purpose of rigorous and detailed research
is to accurately describe the policy problem.